He considered for some minutes.
“Maybe,” he said. “Though one knows all the time one’s life isn’t really right, at the source. That’s the humiliation. I don’t see that the illness counts so much, after that. One is ill because one doesn’t live properly—can’t. It’s the failure to live that makes one ill, and humiliates one.”
“But do you fail to live?” she asked, almost jeering.
“Why yes—I don’t make much of a success of my days. One seems always to be bumping one’s nose against the blank wall ahead.”
Ursula laughed. She was frightened, and when she was frightened she always laughed and pretended to be jaunty.
“Your poor nose!” she said, looking at that feature of his face.
“No wonder it’s ugly,” he replied.
She was silent for some minutes, struggling with her own self-deception. It was an instinct in her, to deceive herself.
“But I’m happy—I think life is awfully jolly,” she said.
“Good,” he answered, with a certain cold indifference.